Texas’ own Cap & Trade bill, call to stop it NOW!

The U.S. House just passed a controversial Cap and Trade energy bill that will cost the average American family $2,000-$3,000 a year in new taxes. Texas Governor Rick Perry came out with a press statement Friday decrying Cap and Trade when he’s the architect of Texas’ own version of a Cap and Trade tax…the sale of TX highways to foreign corporations in half century sweetheart deals. Just a single one of these foreign-owned toll roads will charge commuters 75 cents PER MILE, which translates into more than $3,000 a year in NEW TAXES a la Rick Perry. Read my prior article with all the gory details here. In 2007, the grassroots managed to stop the deal that would have put 281 & 1604 under the control of a foreign company for 50 years, but now that’s back in play.

Perry just called the Texas Legislature into a Special Session to begin July 1 for the express purpose of re-authorizing his highway department to enter into such deals, called Comprehensive Development Agreements or CDAs, since its authority to enter into these contracts will expire August 31. When the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is refusing to sign-off on these contracts in North Texas, that should signal just how bad these deals are for the people of Texas. The Attorney General has already asked the Legislature to REMOVE him from having such oversight authority over CDAs (so much for the Attorney General guarding the public interest), so we cannot rely on the Attorney General to protect us from the Governor’s agenda.

If Texans are chapped about Cap & Trade at the federal level, let’s not overlook Texas’ own Cap and Trade equivalent that will cost Texans as much or far more per year than even the egregious federal Cap and Trade bill. Every Texan MUST ACT NOW!

What can you do to stop this train wreck? Call your STATE legislators NOW (find out who your STATE lawmakers are here or call the Capitol switchboard open M-F, 8 AM – 5 PM, at 512-463-4630) and tell them to vote NO to CDAs that sell our Texas highways to foreign companies. Also, tell your lawmakers NO to the Revolving Fund/Transportation Bank.

In another bill for the special session, SB 1, lawmakers will set-up this fund in order to raid teacher retirement funds and public employee pension funds to invest in these risky toll road schemes that are failing all over the country. Take action right away to protect the integrity of public employee retirement funds.

Terri Hall

6 Responses

A toll is not a Tax, you don’t have to pay it if you don’t drive it. A tax is if you go buy a car you will have to pay a tax and if I go buy a car I have to pay a tax. You keep using this buzz word of a tax when it isn’t. Really what you’re doing is keeping people from paying a toll if they want to while you and your small group can drive for FREE on the up graded frontage roads that we are paying when we drive the toll.

I have not heard that the 2 billion is going to be used specifically for toll projects or for that matter on any toll roads. I am sure that if Senator Carona or TxDOT was doing something wrong you would have already filed a lawsuit to stop it, so I can only conclude they are not.

Perry press release sites the federal cap and trade bill will add 12-59 cents in new taxes PER GALLON of gas over its duration as one of his reasons for opposing the bill, when his freeway privatization schemes will cost taxpayers 75 PER MILE in new taxes to drive. Both bills have the net effect of greatly exploding the cost of driving, with Perry’s PER MILE new tax being levied by a foreign entity at a far greater cost than the increased cost in gasoline under cap and trade. Both bills are egregiously expensive and Texans need to be aware of it and call their lawmakers to stop it.

When Texans approved the $5 billion in bonds, it wasn’t an endorsement of toll roads. Guys like Sen. John Carona went all over the state promising it would NOT be used for toll roads only to draft a bill for the special session that dumps $1 BILLION of those bonds into a toll road investment bank. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay DOUBLE and TRIPLE taxes to drive the same stretch of road, especially roads already built and paid for.

Cap and Trade energy bill has nothing to do with the Governor of Texas calling a special session to have the legislature reauthorize TxDOT, and to authorize the 2 billion in bonds that the people of Texas already approved to spend. This is just hype misleading headlines and I hope that the people are getting tired of this reckless rhetoric on your part.

I hope everybody calls their legislatures and supports the reauthorization of TxDOT and the 2 billion in bonds that the people already voted for by some 67%. TxDOT has been in existence since 1917 serving our community. There reputation across the USA is the envy of other states.

Actually today’s toll roads aren’t “user pays.” Now, at the direction of Rick Perry, Texas is using HEAPS of public money to subsidize these toll projects. What he calls “innovative financing” is truly a taxpayer rip-off where our gas taxes and other public money go into building the toll road, but we have to pay AGAIN in order to drive on it.

In addition, rural areas, or those with less population, do not have enough people paying gas tax to support the state highways in their areas. The urban areas have had some of their money contribute to other areas to ensure connectivity of the state highway system for areas where the gas taxes in those areas cannot support it. That’s why the gas tax system works.

We all agree that its important NOT to have our state highways end at the county line in urban areas, so urban areas “donate” some of their money to support parts of the system that need it. That way we all enjoy a state highway system that allows us to travel from San Antonio to Houston or Dallas and everywhere in between on highway grade roads.